Sir Alex Ferguson has revealed how he had the unenviable task of trying to talk Alex McLeish out of a career in football.

McLeish’s late father begged Ferguson, then manager at Aberdeen, to tell his son to concentrate on becoming an accountant.

Ferguson, who was 66 yesterday, failed but was not too unhappy because McLeish went on to become one of his key players as Aberdeen broke the Old Firm stranglehold in Scotland in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

McLeish’s dad, who was also called Alex, thought playing football would wreck his boy’s chance of landing a steady job.

And he allowed him to become a full-time apprentice at Pittodrie only if he continued with his accountancy studies.

But when McLeish junior decided to quit after three years of studying, his dad was distraught and asked Ferguson for help.

“I’ll always remember his father coming to my house when Alex decided to quit accountancy,” he said.

“Alex had been picked for Scotland by then and he didn’t want to go back to his studies and his father was very unhappy about it. He wanted me to persuade his lad to go back to accountancy – fortunately, I failed to do so.

“Once they leave school a lot of young players think: ‘That’s it, I’m working now’. But Alex was different. He continued his lessons and even went on to study at night school.

“He was already with an accountancy firm in Aberdeen, so he would train with us in the morning, do his accountancy work in the afternoons, then go on to night school to study for his exams.

“He did that for three years so it was a big decision for him at the time to quit accountancy after putting so much into it. But it showed there was always that intelligence and decisiveness about him.” Ferguson goes head-to-head with McLeish for the first time as a manager today saying that, of all his former players at both Aberdeen and Manchester United, ‘Big Eck’ was always a certainty to go into management.

He said: “Alex always had the right qualities to become a manager, even as a young player you could see that in him. I thought he was intelligent and he always had a good presence and appearance about him, as well as being a good footballer, of course.

“He and Willie Miller were mainstays of that great Aberdeen team. But apart from that, he was a really clever boy.

“You could say I could see a manager in Alex from an early age because he was always a great student of the game.

“He wasn’t going to change his mind. He always had that dogged determination to succeed.”

Ferguson was glad to help McLeish in his early years as a manager and when he called to ask his advice over the Birmingham job, he told him to take it.

“Even in his early years as a manager at Motherwell and Hibernian he was always phoning me, asking me why I made certain changes or about training programmes.

“He would come to games all the time down here, Europe and other big nights. And he was on to me all the time about having a go at management in England. And I think the euphoria and success of the Scotland team in the Euro 2008 campaign just increased his desire to try England.

“I think there have been two or three attempts over the last few years to bring him down here.

“But when he asked me about Birmingham, I said: ‘Well, I always think if you’re going to make a big step like that you should go to a club with a bit of history, tradition and potential’.

“Birmingham have the potential crowd-wise. My father supported them when he worked in the city before the War and they were the biggest team in Birmingham then.” Despite his clear affection for McLeish, there will be no room for sentiment at Old Trafford today as Ferguson bids to get United’s title challenge back on track after defeat at West Ham on Saturday.

He will be boosted by the return of the talismanic Wayne Rooney and Michael Carrick, after both missed the Upton Park game with a stomach virus.